New Eden
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 2. 3. 17:43
A river splits New Eden in half. On one side is the rundown, sagging city. On the other is an overripe labyrinthine slum that would make a shantytown look like Nirvana.
This is the Warren, the kind of place you step into and don’t come back. Never to be heard of again.
The crew’s rendezvous point is located on the “good” side of New Eden. It’s a riverside ryokan, an old-fashioned roadhouse run by an older woman who doesn’t get all chuffed when five mercenaries loaded with high-powered weapons ask for one east-facing room on the fifth floor. She even provides tea service and a quiet spot for prayer, both of which Vienne and I enjoy before the rest of the davos shows up—which happens all too fast for my taste.
“You know the plan,” Aziz says after the innkeeper has poured us all a fresh cup and bowed her way out of the room. “Let’s get with it.”
“Roger,” we all say in unison, all of us dressed in civilian clothes. Five Regulators dressed in nothing but armor would all but guarantee we’d never find Charlotte.
My job is to act as Vienne’s spotter: I open the curtain and am greeted with a view of the Warren in all its disgusting glory. Using a pair of omnoculars, I scan the three entrances to the slum, counting the number of people who pass in and out. Not people, customers. For what it is, the Warren is a hotbed of capitalist activity. None of it legal, I bet. The inhabitants of the Warren are called đibui, which, loosely translated, means “dust boys.” They’re also known by soldiers who’ve had to fight them as wobblies.
“According to statistics I downloaded at the library,” Mimi says, interrupting my train of thought, “roughly eight-seven percent of that trade is illicit, if estimates from CorpCom bureaucrats can be considered accurate.”
“Thanks for that tidbit,” I say. “Know anything about the blighters who run the place?”
“Affirmative,” she says. “The Warren is governed by individuals referred to as đibui. They are a loose confederation of warlords and tribal leaders answering to one individual known to you as the Razor.”
“Oy, Turtle,” Vienne says as she sets up a tripod next to Pinch, who sits on the sill, practicing a magic trick. “The point of spotting is to report to the shooter what you’re spotting, not talking to yourself.”
“Right.” Damn, I’ve got to get better at this talking-to-Mimi thing. “Lots of activity around that high hill with the bright blue shack on top. Must be the Razor’s base.”
“I don’t like this plan,” Vienne says.
“I mark the door at three hundred and fifty kilometers.”
“Three hundred and twenty,” Vienne says. “I still don’t like this plan.”
“Why don’t you like it?” Aziz appears next to Vienne, standing between us, sipping a cup of tea. “It’s a good strategy. We infiltrate the Razor’s base, do a quick snatch-and-grab of the target, exfilitrate the Warren, and complete the extraction.”
Vienne sets her armalite on the tripod. It’s been equipped with a long barrel designed for sniping. She looks at Aziz, then begins calibrating the rifle. “Because I’m stuck here. If something goes wrong, I’ll be out of the action.”
“Nothing’s going to go awry,” Aziz says.
“Something,” Vienne says, sighting the target through her scope, “always goes wrong.”
Aziz smiles. “I never took you as a pessimist, Sidewinder.”
“I’m not,” she says, glancing at me. “I’m a realist.”
“Huzzah, you wankers! How’s this for camo?” Sarge bellows as he comes out of the latrine. He’s dressed in rags, his face covered in mud, and he reeks of manure.
Pinch covers her mouth. “Du hast den Arsch offen! What is that stench?”
“Javelina shite!” Sarge throws his arms wide and does a three-sixty so that we can fawn over his skills. “Found a whole lagoon of it out past the bazaar. Thought I’d make the part more authentic, like.”
“So you bathed in it?” Pinch says, coughing and gagging.
“Didn’t want to blow my cover if they got too close.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Nobody’s going to get within five meters of you.”
“Including us,” Aziz says. “Out, before the landlady gets a whiff and throws us all on the street.”
Sarge drops his arms and frowns, looking crestfallen. Then he snatches up his armalit and goose steps to the door. It slams behind him.
“Why is it always the ones named Sarge?” Pinch says.
“Enough chatter,” Aziz says. “Once the target is in place, and we’re ready to spring the trap, I’ll contact you all via the telemetry functions in your armor.” He places a hand on Vienne’s shoulder. She doesn’t shrug it off, and I feel my blood boil. “Our shooter’s in position, and our window of opportunity is closing. Let’s move.”
“Warning, Cowboy,” Mimi says. “I am detecting elevated heart rate and excretion of stress hormones in your bloodstream.”
I glare at Aziz’s hand, waiting for it too to move out. “I wonder why.”
“I can postulate a theory. Would you like to hear it?”
“Sarcasm, Mimi,” I say. “You should learn to detect it.”
“Directive accepted,” she says. “In order to examine this phenomenon, it may be necessary to replicate it.”
“No problem,” I say as Aziz finally lifts his carfarging hand and signals Pinch to follow him. I take the chance to nick a few tea biscuits for later. “I’ve got enough sarcasm for both of us.”
Sarge meets us at the door. He bows. “After you?”
“I thought I told you to leave,” Aziz says “Out. Double time.”
Sarge grins through his grayed teeth but complies.
I am the last out. I lock the door and almost pull it shut. “Vienne?” I ask from the door.
“What?” she says without taking her eye off the scope.
“Do you ever miss them? Our old crew?”
“Sometimes.” She draws back from the rifle but doesn’t look back at me. “I miss Mimi and her stupid poems. Sometimes it’s like she’s right there with me, telling me to make her proud. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I know just what you mean,” I say. “Well, good luck.”
“You, too,” she says.” You know how I hate collateral damage, so keep your head down when the shooting starts. I don’t want to make a mistake and blow your brains out.”
“Yeah,” I say and then think, I love you, too.
“Sarcasm?” Mimi asks as I lock the door behind me.
“Half and half,” I say. “Half and half.”
A dozen rickety footbridges span the river between New Eden and the Warren. The river is full of garbage. Children wade through the garbage, collecting scraps of what-have-you. The water is covered in greenish-brown scum, and it stinks like an open-air latrine. Seeing little ones neck deep in the filth turns my stomach. How can people live like this? How can the Razor, the leader of the đibui, live with himself?
As Pinch and I walk across one such rickety bridge, I scope out the rabbit warren of huts, houses, alleys, and twisting paths. The place is a nightmare, and I can’t imagine how anyone could survive in it. But because the poor and wretched never stop coming, the Warren is one of the most densely populated settlements in the prefecture, and probably all of Mars.
“Aziz expects us to find the target in that mess?” I ask Pinch.
“No, he expects the kidnapper to find us,” she says. “Now smile and pretend we’re all chummy.”
“So we’re bait?” I say. “Is that Aziz’s plan?”
“What’s the matter, afraid you’ll catch something?” she says, moving close and batting her brown eyes.
“More like I’m afraid you’ll steal something.”
“It’s only stealing if I don’t give it back.” Pinch squeezes my hand. She swings our arms, like we’re lovers taking a stroll. A stroll over a rat-infested, garbage-clogged river. The scene has romantic interlude written all over it.
“Sarcasm?” Mimi asks.
“Ding-ding,” I say. “We have a winner.”
“Data point recorded,” Mimi says.
Pinch cuddles up to me, laying her head against my shoulder. She gives my arm a squeeze.
“Blood pressure is rising,” Mimi says.
“What’s this about?” I say, trying to act casual.
“Following orders,” Pinch says. “Doing a convincing job of pretending we’re lovers, and by extension, making the Sidewinder red-eyed with jealousy.”
“Her?” I say. “Why would she be jealous?”
“Kuso!” she says, looking at me with mischief in her eyes. “You really are green, aren’t you?”
Phttt!
Beside the footbridge, the dirty water splashes high.
Pinch pulls me closer, stands on tiptoes, and plants a kiss on my cheek. “Let’s see how that—”
A meter in front of us, one of the planks explodes, spraying splinters into the air.
“There we go,” Pinch says, laughing. “Looks like Sidewinder’s blood is boiling.”
“Vienne?” I look back at the ryokan. At the fifth floor with the lone window open. “She’s sniping at us?”
Pinch plucks a long splinter from the bridge. She holds it up to the sun, examining the edge of a bullet hole, then hands it to me. “What do you think?”
What do I think? The idea that Vienne is jealous makes my heart soar, but I’m not about to spill my guts to Pinch. So, instead, I examine the hole in the splinter. “She’s using full metal jacket rounds.”
“To be precise,” Mimi says, “three-thirty-eight magnum rimless bottlenecked center-fire cartridges.”
“Mimi, aren’t you supposed to warn me when I’m in danger?”
“You were in no danger,” she says. “Based on the available data as well as our combined experience, if Vienne had intended to hit you, you would be dead.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?” I say.
“My purpose is to provide information, Cowboy, not to provide solace.”
“Thanks for clarifying that.” I unlace my hand from Pinch’s and tell her, “Maybe it’d be better if we weren’t so—”
“Cuddly?”
“Demonstrative.”
“Afraid the Sidewinder’s actually going to shoot you?”
“Nope. Afraid she’s going to shoot you.”
“She wouldn’t dare.”
“You don’t know Vienne,” I say, “I once saw her take down a Mahindra brigadier from over three hundred meters. Didn’t even bat an eye.”
“I’m wearing symbiarmor.”
“So was he.” I touch the base of her skull. “The bullet hit the sweet spot. Blew his head right out of his helmet.”
Pinch steps away from me. “You’re a handsome hunk of man flesh,” she says, “but not worth taking a bullet for. I’ll have to find another way of yanking the Sidewinder’s chain.”
“You make a habit of buggering off expert snipers?”
We turn to the left, down the main street—if you can call a mud-pit path wide enough for four people to walk abreast a street.
“Not so much,” she says. “This is different. I don’t like the way she looks at Aziz. Just like you don’t the way Aziz looks at her.”
Point taken. “That’s bad,” I say.
“What is?”
“That noise.”
Pinch cups a hand to her ear. “Nothing. Not a sound.”
“Exactly.” I scan the alley. It’s empty. All of the shacks are empty, too. The only noise is a tugboat horn sounding on the river. The stink, however, has faded. “They’re setting up an ambush.”
“That didn’t take long, did it?”
“The faster the better for them,” I say. “We studied urban guerilla warfare in Battle School.”
“Stow it.” She touches the handle of a combat knife hidden under her coat. “I’ve got no use for school lessons.”
“Wait,” I say. “They’ll show themselves.”
“If we’re lucky, you mean.” Pinch is starting to feel antsy; I can tell by the way she pushes a lock of red hair out of her face. Sweat beads on her brow and her upper lip, which she wipes with the sleeve of her coat.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “You don’t strike me as the nervous type.”
“I don’t like being out in the open,” she says. “Makes me feel exposed.”
“No worries. Vienne’s got us covered. As you may have noticed, she can shoot the wings off a fly.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a whole lot more than one fly, innit?” She nudges me and nods toward a latrine at the end of the alley. “Movement.”
“Roger.” I note the target. “Keep walking. Casual, like. Until we can get a visual.” As we move down the alley, I ask Mimi, “Can you do a quick scan of biorhythmic signatures in the area?”
“Affirmative,” she says. “The scan will be complete in approximately sixty-two seconds.”
Too slow. I need that intel now.
Sixty-two seconds later, Mimi says, “Biorhythmic scan has detached an entity ten meters on your twelve. From the rapid heart rate, I can postulate that it is—”
“A little susie,” Pinch says, pointing.
Without hesitating, I turn toward her.
“Wait.” She grabs my arm. “It could be a trap.”
I shrug. Of course it is. “That’s the whole point.”
When I reach the child, she’s cowering against a wall. Her hair is matted. Her face is dirty, except from two tracks running from her eyes. She has no shoes, and the thin nightdress she’s wearing is so threadbare it’s almost translucent.
“Hey.” I squat before her, but she scoots back, terrified.
“Not a good idea,” Pinch warns me, but I don’t look back at her.
“My name’s Durango,” I ask the susie. “What’s yours?”
No reply. Just wide eyes filled with terror. Her lips are cracked and her stomach bloated from starvation. I touch my empty stomach and realize that I have no idea what real hunger is.
“Hey,” Pinch calls, her voice tight as a wire. “Not. A. Good. Idea.”
“She’s half starved.” From my coat pocket, I take out the tea biscuits I nicked. Her eyes go wide. She snatches them, then disappears through a hole in the tarpaper. “See, she just wanted food.”
“Oh, Dur-ango,” Pinch says, sing-song. “Wobblies on our si-ix. Turn aro-ound.”
I stand and turn. Surrounding us, guns drawn and ready to fire, are a couple dozen đibui. They look as malnourished as the child, but instead of fear, their eyes are filled with hatred.
I raise my hands. The wobblies herd me and Pinch together so that we are back to back.
“You got wax in your ears?” she says.
I grin. “Told you I knew what I was doing.”
“That makes one of us,” she says, hands in the air.
The wobblies part, and a thin man with juggish ears, a long neck, and a black unibrow walks up to us. Circles. Sniffing like a scavenger deciding if the kill is still fresh enough. “Frisk them!” he barks.
The đibui grabs at bodies. Pulling, yanking. Tearing the clothes that hide our armor. They find Pinch’s combat knife but get nothing from me.
“Nada else on ’em,” Krill,” one of the đibui says as he delivers the knife.
Krill grunts and slides it under the cord he uses for a belt. “What you doing in the Warren?”
“We came to buy,” I say, trying to sound scared.
“Too confident,” Pinch whispers. “Whine.”
“Liar!” Krill howls. “You’re eyes ain’t the pinkish.”
“Take anything you want,” I say, making my voice crack as I whine. “Just don’t hurt us, please.”
Krill smacks me across the face. “Đibui take what they want. Don’t need no pretty boy’s permission.” He runs a filthy hand through Pinch’s red hair and licks his lips. “As for hurting, the Razor’ll be deciding how much pain you get.”